Here's the rundown of the problem/xystem

2 physical drives: Drive 1 has 2 partitions, an 'install' partition created by Dell, and WinXP formatted in NTFS.

Drive 2 was wiped clean during the RH9 install, and I let the install program take care of all partitioning. All linux information is on drive 2.

I liked RH enough that I'm just going to dedicate an entire system to it, and also want to remove the drive entirely becuase I want to upgrade to a bigger hard drive.

If I remove the 2nd disk, GRUB hangs on boot, and I can't get into windows. If I put it back in, all is fine, Grub loads either RH or WinXP w/o a problem.

I've tried to restore the NTFS MBR, but I can't access my Rescue Console (to run fixmbr) if I boot from the WinXP CD. It says my admin password is wrong.

So I got the "Emergency Boot CD" from some website that has lots of utils on it, including a rescue linux distro that had a Windows password changer. I tried to change the password, and no matter how many times I try, the software says it does it, but then it remains unchanged and I can't get into the rescue console.

Please help. I'm out of ideas on how to get a new NTFS MBR. Thanks.
-J

ive had problems with that rescue console not accetping th epassword either. did you even set one? try using no pssword at all. if that doesnt work try every possible password youve ever had on that machine. i remember i was doing that to my girlfriends computer and it ended up being some password she used a long time ago. if you want the whole system redhat though why not just wipe everything clean and do a fresh install

I know that it is a blank password, the rescue linux utility reported it as such, and I never set one since it is a single user system. Rescue console won't take the blank password as valid.

and I don't want this system as RH only, this one needs to stay XP, I'll make another entire system dedicated to linux.

Thanks
-J

then you should probably put that second drive in, boot into windows and create a admin password so you can get into the recovery console

that's part of the problem... if I put the second drive in, GRUB locks up, and I can't get into XP at all.

If I leave the drives as is, I can boot into XP, but no matter how many times I try to change the admin password, I can't enter the recovery console.

well could you do a fresh install of both os's? sounds like you may be nearing a last resort.

Are you using a Dell Windows XP disk? If so I remember that some 'recovery disks' came with passwords. Might also be a problem if you are using a Microsoft XP disk on machine where a Dell XP disk was used for install. Does the Dell recovery partition have a means for fixing your XP install?

Another thought might be to try XP or Windows 2k3 boot floppies.

Install XP on an extra HD and access your original XP installation, deleting password file--not sure how to do that.

Change NTFS to FAT, with Partition Magic, then use "fdisk /mbr", or see if recovery console is now available.